Just what exactly are the “Sewer Boys,†the reptilian hybrids kept in a cage by Nathan Lane in Dicks: The Musical? Their names are Backpack and Whisper. They eat regurgitated deli meat. They can do a kickline when Lane is singing, but they also consume human flesh. Lane’s character describes them as “gay culture.â€
Even Alisha Silverstein, who designed and built them with her brother Zach, wasn’t sure what to make of the Sewer Boys when she got the gig. “There was no explanation,†she remembers. She did get some idea once she read parts of the script, originally titled Fucking Identical Twins. “They’re like found pets,†she reasons, somewhat uncertainly. “I adopt kittens off the street all the time. I get it. It’s like that but sewer rats. It kind of helped.â€
The way the Silversteins describe the process of imagining and building the Sewer Boys is almost as bizarre and hilarious as the Sewer Boys themselves — and they are maybe the most oddball part of this Larry Charles–directed A24 musical written by and starring Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp as twins separated at birth who want to reunite their parents, but who also end up having sex with each other.
How do you invent creatures that are somehow horrifying and cuddly at the same time? With a lot of love and silicone. Here’s how the process unfolded.
A Little More Than Gollum, a Little Less Than Human
The concept of the Sewer Boys was just a throwaway joke in the original Upright Citizens Brigade stage show on which Dicks is based. “So once this became a movie, we thought it would be fun to blow them out and actually see them,†Jackson and Sharp wrote in an email to Vulture. “Though there were briefly some discussions of having them be played by Cirque du Soleil performers, we always wanted them to be puppets.â€
Producer Jeremy Reitz reached out to Alisha, primarily a costume designer with whom he had worked on the TV series Adam Ruins Everything. For that show she had tried her hand at puppet designing, building sewer-rat puppets who ate what people had dumped down a toilet. She asked her older brother, Zach, if he wanted to help. Alisha took on the initial designs, while Zach sculpted and brought them to life, both working off Charles’s suggestions.
“As I often do, I sketched a version of what I thought they’d look like, based on [the script], with little notes and thoughts along the margins,†Charles wrote in an email. “Everyone responded positively and that became a sort of template. Then Alisha and Zach manifested those ideas in a three-dimensional form, which gave them a tactile reality and yet still maintained the fanciful handmade quality which imbued them with personality. Horrible yet quaint. Scary yet sweet. Weird but cute. And strangely soulful.â€
Alisha’s first take on a sewer boy was a little too human, she says, and looked not unlike Gollum from The Lord of the Rings or “a really cute little alien boy,†she says.
So she swung in the other direction, toward something more lizardy. “It was like a Ninja Turtle,†she says. “Like their DNA got spliced with a human. That’s kind of how Larry was explaining it.†The Sewer Boys couldn’t be too lizardlike, though. “We had to dial that back a bit, add some more human features,†Zach explains.
That meant experimenting with their teeth. At first, the Sewer Boys’ chompers looked too much like dentures, so the Silversteins started chiseling them into pointy fangs, which were too scary. “So then we morphed the two so they were like denture, chiseled-down teeth,†Alisha says. The result was “endearing and not scary, and they were cute, and they were goofy looking. That helped sell the sweetness aspect of them, and I think that’s when it really came together.†While some characters in the film scream upon seeing the quasi-human freaks, Lane’s character Harris coos over them, and with their pug noses and expressive eyes, it’s sort of easy to see why they captured his heart with their mouths of askew gnashers.
That was the ultimate challenge of the Sewer Boys: to make them look like nothing an audience has ever seen before. Designs that looked too much like something out of Jim Henson’s workshop were rejected. And they had to be sort of adorable, like drooling “tiny toddlers and babies,†Zach explains. “Like, Aw, it’s so cute. It’s disgusting. But it’s also cute.†Alisha adds: “I think that all came in with the facial features and the way that the puppeteers animated them.†They were operated by puppeteers from the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles, and they move somewhat haltingly, like toddlers trying to walk with rounded arms.
Gross, Perfect, and Weirdly Attractive
Here’s a fun fact. The Sewer Boys — as well as their parents, who appear in the movie’s climax — are all anatomically endowed underneath their loincloths and ratty T-shirts. The mom sewer creature has six boobs. That was on the request of Charles himself. “He was like, ‘I know they are going to have a loincloth over them, but I just want to make sure it’s filled out properly,’†Alisha remembers.
Once they had a mold for the Sewer Boys, the Silversteins then had to figure out what these creatures were going to feel like. They landed on “slimy,†and found a silicone material that offered the skin translucency they had in mind. Though there was a lot of planning, the final product came together in two months and delighted the crew. “Once it came out in silicone they were like, ‘Oh my God, they’re so gross, it’s perfect. They’re, like, weirdly attractive but so gross,’†Alisha says. The boys are also hefty: The silicone makes them weigh about 15 pounds each.
There was a lot of build up to the Sewer Boys’ big debut, but, according to Alisha, it was clear they were stealing the show at a certain point. “The anticipation is almost like Christmas, like, ‘What is it going to be? What is it going to be?’ Everyone is so jazzed,†she says. “They got a warm welcoming.†She adds: People on set were “entranced†by them. Plus they were better than Jackson and Sharp could have imagined. “The finished product turned out INCREDIBLE,†they wrote. “We’re also some of the only people in the world, it seems, who think they’re equally revolting and cute. We love our little guys!!!â€